


Obscure Sorrows, Happy Morrows

by MagitekUnit05953234



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Child Death, Episode Ardyn Spoilers, Episode Ignis Verse 2, Everyone needs a break, Introspection, It's only briefly mentioned in one chapter, M/M, Mentions of chronic pain, Nonsequential Chapters, Prior Tag Not Applicable To All Chapters, References to Depression, Ships aren't a focus, Suicidal Ideation, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, Unhealthy Dieting, Vignette series, bc Ardyn, previous tag applies to one chapter, the spoilers are in chapter 11
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-21
Updated: 2019-03-26
Packaged: 2019-06-30 11:34:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 2,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15750852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagitekUnit05953234/pseuds/MagitekUnit05953234
Summary: Noctis never pretended to make peace with the idea that his future always came with the cost of the loss of a king, but he had at least steadied himself to the idea of watching a slow, graceful decline into the grave. Not this. Never this.





	1. Mahpiohanzia

**Author's Note:**

> I found The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows and immediately had to write a drabble collection inspired by it. Sorry y'all.  
> (It's not truly an author's note by chaboy MT unless there's an apology in it)  
> UPDATE FEBRUARY 2 2019: All of these drabbles are contained in the same timeline unless stated here. I'll update as chapters are released. As of now, chapter 8 and 10 are not within the same timeline as the rest and also do not share timelines with each other.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _n._ the disappointment of being unable to fly, unable to stretch out your arms and vault into the air, having finally shrugged off the ballast of your own weight and ignited the fuel tank of unfulfilled desires you’ve been storing up since before you were born.

Cape Caem is the home Noctis never knew he wanted— full of the sounds of his friends and comrades bustling in the kitchen, the light of the blue sky above, the scent of the breeze carrying the pleasant sting of salt.

Noctis sits on the edge of the promontory, his legs dangling five hundred feet above the surf. He wonders what it would have been like to live out here on the cape with his father and his friends, without the war and the Ring and the crown.

Noctis will never know a life without the weight of the world on him. He will never know what it’s like to have friends who aren’t tied to him by royal decree, to have a father who’s not too busy withering for his country to be there for his son, to be depression free and unhindered by chronic pain.

He wishes he could leave it all behind. Just gather his friends, get in the car, and fly down the road washed with the quiet tones of a radio one notch above mute.

He can’t, so he closes his eyes, breathes deep, and waits for someone to call him inside for the night.


	2. Waldosia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _n._ [Brit. wallesia] a condition characterized by scanning faces in a crowd looking for a specific person who would have no reason to be there, which is your brain’s way of checking to see whether they’re still in your life, subconsciously patting its emotional pockets before it leaves for the day.

Prompto stands at parade rest, his left hand lightly cupping his right behind his back. The sun shines proud and hot, melting Prompto’s heavy glaive coat into his skin. He remembers not to lock his knees.

The president is speaking. Prompto nearly knows the speech by heart, memorized from the president’s painstakingly precise recitations Prompto has heard time and time again, mumbled over a skillet in the early mornings or a cup of tea late at night, but Prompto should probably be listening anyway. He scans the crowd instead.

Prompto doesn’t so much look for signs of a threat as he searches for a person. A flash of distinctive eyes, hair just a touch too long to be intentional, a chin dusted with stubble. Prompto is… dreadfully off task.

Sometimes Prompto wonders if they were ever real at all. Sometimes he looks and looks, just to check. Maybe if he just catches a fleeting glimpse, he’ll know it all happened.

It’s hard to believe the past is true sometimes after the sun finally rose.

Prompto isn’t sure which man he is looking for, but his heart beats faster at the thought anyway. From fear or misguided hope, who can say?


	3. Liberosis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _n._ the desire to care less about things—to loosen your grip on your life, to stop glancing behind you every few steps, afraid that someone will snatch it from you before you reach the end zone—rather to hold your life loosely and playfully, like a volleyball, keeping it in the air, with only quick fleeting interventions, bouncing freely in the hands of trusted friends, always in play.

The day begins at four hundred hours, three rotations of the short hand before the sun usually rises. The first sixty minutes are spent replying to early morning emails (to be sent automatically at a more acceptable time of day) and sorting out neglected university work whilst huddled under a comforter illuminated by the blue glow of a laptop screen. The next sixty are consumed by preparing for the day, finishing up classwork in the spaces between brushing teeth and dressing and eating an unfortunate excuse for a breakfast. Usually a granola bar or something of the like.

The rest of the morning, Ignis tends to the needs of a young man crushed under the weight of his crown and his own mind. Ignis almost wishes he could resent him, he who is the center of all the work Ignis must put in day after day and _has_ put in since he was ~~far too~~ young. Ignis can’t bring himself to do it. He can’t even let himself slip into apathy.

Noctis tells him to take a break. Ignis smiles and says he’ll consider it.

Ignis only ever asks to abdicate his responsibilities once. He of all people is refused.


	4. The Meantime

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _n._ the moment of realization that your quintessential future self isn’t ever going to show up, which forces the role to fall upon the understudy, the gawky kid for whom nothing is easy, who spent years mouthing their lines in the wings before being shoved into the glare of your life, which is already well into its second act.

It’s raining and the water tastes like ash. That’s what Noctis focuses on as he stares out at the ruins of his home. The rain tastes like the smoke of a dead city.

This was never meant to happen. Noctis never pretended to make peace with the idea that his future always came with the cost of the loss of a king, but he had at least steadied himself to the idea of watching a slow, graceful decline into the grave. Not this. Never this.

Noctis wonders what his dad looks like now. He wonders where his dad even is. Did the Empire give him a proper burial? Was his crown still nestled in his hair, cold metal pressed against skin long cooled by a day or more of death?

Noctis realizes suddenly that he never so much as considered what it would be like to physically tuck that crown behind his own ear. He had always thought more about the emotional weight than the action itself. He supposes that it probably wasn’t much of a heavy thing at all, in reality. It was thin, almost fragile-looking. 

Noctis drops his phone into his pocket and turns away from the overlook. 


	5. Kairosclerosis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _n._ the moment you realize that you’re currently happy—consciously trying to savor the feeling—which prompts your intellect to identify it, pick it apart and put it in context, where it will slowly dissolve until it’s little more than an aftertaste.

This would have been the perfect night one year ago. It still is, in ways. It’s pleasantly warm, and the breeze rustles the leaves of the trees nearby, providing a cover for the daemonic noises in the distance. The fire is down to cinders but it still casts a low light on the chairs around it. Three of the people Gladio cares about most (accompanied in that regard only by his sister, the Hesters, and Cor at this point) are asleep or close to it a few yards away in their tent. The hunt money is flowing nicely, the combined might of two Astrals is at Noctis’s beck and call, and no one’s had to use a potion in days. It’s as good a night as can be after the Fall, and Gladio is content. 

It’s odd to feel okay when one has lost everything. It feels selfish, or perhaps simply foolish. Gladio has no home to return to, no parents’ pride to look forward to, no throne to stand beside and yet...

Prompto emerges from the tent, bleary-eyed. “You coming back to bed? S‘late.”

“Yeah,” Gladio joins Prompto and drops a kiss onto his forehead. “Let’s get to sleep.”


	6. Mauerbauertraurigkeit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _n._ the inexplicable urge to push people away, even close friends who you really like—as if all your social tastebuds suddenly went numb, leaving you unable to distinguish cheap politeness from the taste of genuine affection, unable to recognize its rich and ambiguous flavors, its long and delicate maturation, or the simple fact that each tasting is double-blind.

Prompto loves his friends. He does. He would do anything for them.

And yet…

And yet Prompto can’t help but lay awake on nights like this, nestled between Ignis and the tent wall, wondering what would happen if he just called it quits and left.

No one could stop him, really. Sure, he swore an oath, but there's no one left to uphold the rules of the Crownsguard. No one could truly say that _all this_ was what Prompto signed up for either.

If Prompto vanished into the night, would they genuinely worry? Noctis probably would, but even if he wanted to look for Prompto, Gladio and Ignis would stop him. They have a job to do, after all.

“You should get some rest, love,” Ignis rolls over to face Prompto, his hair flattened to his head and his glasses missing, likely set aside carefully in some dark corner of the tent. His accent is thicker with sleep. “We have an early start tomorrow.”

“I know,” Prompto smiles, though he knows Ignis won’t be able to see it. “I will. Promise.”

Prompto isn’t going anywhere, even if sometimes he wonders how much better off his boyfriends would be without him.


	7. Pâro

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _n._ the feeling that no matter what you do is always somehow wrong—as if there’s some obvious way forward that everybody else can see but you, each of them leaning back in their chair and calling out helpfully, “colder, colder, colder...”

A bowl of lettuce sits on the table. A few slices of tomato are interspersed throughout, but other than that the salad is just a lot of bland greenery.

Prompto sets his phone down next to his dinner. Tries not to look too hard at the plateaued loss chart on his calorie counter app.

Not for the first time tonight, Prompto draws out the letter he's taken to keeping in his pocket. Smooths it out. Stares at it.

Lady Lunafreya wants Prompto to be friends with Prince Noctis, but Prompto's not good enough yet. He doesn't know when he will be.

Prompto doesn't even really know how to make friends, to be honest. Other kids do it like it's the most natural thing in the world, but those same kids shun Prompto by instinct. Why can they just form meaningful relationships out of nothing? Why can't Prompto? Is it something he did? Something he no longer remembers?

Is it the ominous tattoo he's been hiding his entire life? Did that cause this?

Prompto rests his head on the table. Someday, he will finally figure it out.  Get it right. He doesn't know how, but he will make Lady Lunafreya proud.


	8. Moment of Tangency

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _n._ the instant in which you can just barely catch a glimpse of what might have been, had the lines of you and a stranger’s lives not been so devastatingly parallel

Noctis has never had a friend and he never will. Restrained by the trappings of a ring on his finger all too early, ~~no one is ready to rule at sixteen but when the king dies another must take his place~~  Noctis became a professional daydreamer, medalling in the art of imagining a life he has never lived. Perhaps that blonde photographer who always _just_ misses his eye at press conferences could have been a friend. The bespectacled regular on the train Noctis uses to sneak into the outer reaches of the city could have been a trusted confidant. The name carved into marble in the royal tombs could have been a brother, had the time between dates spanned longer than three measly years.

Gladiolus Amicitia. Who would he have been?

There is no heir to the Amicitia line. Clarus shields Noctis instead of Clarus's son, and they both know just how futile that truly is.

Noctis wishes that he could know friendship before the gods call for his death, but it's not to be.

One day though, he smiles at that photographer, meets his gaze, and receives a hesitant grin in return from behind the camera.

It's not enough.


	9. Keta

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _n._ an image that inexplicably leaps back into your mind from the distant past.

“Oh”, Noctis says suddenly. “Have we... done this before?”

“Done what before?” Ignis has stargazed with Noctis too many times to count, and held his hand like this just enough times for it to still feel frightening and new in a good way, like binding magic to blades for the first time and feeling lightning seeping into your veins.

“We went to this haven, I think,” Noctis yawns and leans back to recline against Ignis. “When I was little. Really little. They took us out to see the fireflies since Insomnia didn’t have any.”

Ignis recalls those fireflies, flashing a competition against a late sunset as if they could best the stars.

Ignis had to have been nine or so then, since that excursion was about a year before Noctis became wheelchair-bound.

Ignis remembers yellow glow seeping out between fingers sticky from dessert. They had cake that evening, sweet with strawberries and syrup. Noctis stopped liking strawberries after he came back from Tenebrae.

Something blinks in the distance.

Ignis presses a kiss to the back of Noctis’s hand then pulls him up from the haven floor. “We ought to catch some fireflies. For old time’s sake.”

“Alright,” and Noctis smiles.


	10. Kudoclasm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _n_. When lifelong dreams are brought down to earth

Ignis clings tighter, ever tighter to Noct’s shoulders, fingers curling into the heavy fabric of his jacket. 

“Noctis,” Ignis gasps out. It is all he can manage. All he can bear to say in the light of dawn. “ _ Noctis _ .”

“I'm here,” he says, and his arms encircle Ignis and draw him closer. “You did it.”

Ignis sobs into Noct’s collarbone as a decade of premature grieving lifts from him. Peels away like the bark of a dead log, revealing green shoots of a new tree sprouting from the rot underneath.

There is movement behind Ignis, two sets of booted feet ascending the steps to the throne. When Gladio and Prompto join the embrace, shaking and bloody and desperate, Ignis has never felt so happy. Never felt so complete. 

“Look at us,” Noctis murmurs. His right hand, scarred with new burns already healed, trails up to run through Ignis’s hair. “The sun’s coming up and we’re all… together.”

Gladio rumbles something in reply that Ignis doesn’t catch. Prompto’s arm trembles where it's draped across Ignis’s spine.

Noct’s voice, when he speaks again, is wry. “Didn’t think I’d live to see the day but… I shouldn't have doubted you for a second.”


	11. Kuebiko

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _n_. a state of exhaustion inspired by an act of senseless violence, which forces you to revise your image of what can happen in this world—mending the fences of your expectations, weeding out invasive truths, cultivating the perennial good that’s buried under the surface—before propping yourself up in the middle of it like an old scarecrow, who’s bursting at the seams but powerless to do anything but stand there and watch.

* * *

“Are you enjoying your stay?”

Ardyn looks at Verstael, the wretched empty man sipping wine and _making conversation_ as if he doesn't view Ardyn as a monster or even worse— a weapon. Something lacking the care that sentience deserves. Ardyn can't stand the sight of his face, so he turns his gaze to the food.

There are pastries and some sort of vegetable, and the meat. Well. The meat is… fine. It tastes familiar enough to what Ardyn knew in youth, though it is apparently artificial in some way.

It is charred, on the edges. The smell of it, the meat, the blackened flesh of something falsely created, it clings to Ardyn's nostrils. When he closes his eyes, he sees smoke climb high into an ancient sky, his brother standing before a burning pyre, the outstretched arms of the forsaken dead.

All of them are dead. Aera. Somnus. Gilgamesh. Everyone that Ardyn healed. Everyone that Ardyn could not.

Everyone except him.

Ardyn digs his fingernails into the meat of his palm. After that first month spent trying to die in this hellish facility, it is the one liberty he is still provided with his own body.

He’s so _tired_...

“No.”


End file.
